Living4TheSun

Please, someone in the USA answer this question for me.  If you have arrived here because you were searching for "cicadas in stoupa greece", please tell me why you are searching for that phrase?

I have to ask this because this is the third time this has happened.  About 2 months ago, and then several months before that I saw people visit these pages while searching for that phrase.  What's so strange?  Well, every time it happens the visitors are from the USA and within a couple of hours there will be several people with the same or similar searches from various states in the USA.

What sparks off this strange desire to know about cicadas in Stoupa?  Please, please, please someone who is doing this either post a comment or email me direct to let me know.

If you're thinking of living in Greece or having a luxury holiday home, then I have something you might be interested in!!

On the main pages of our site we have not ONE, but TWO luxury homes being advertised for sale direct from the owners!

One is close to the sea, just outside the village of Riglia (click here to see details), the other is on the outskirts of the village of Neochorie (click here to see details).

There's lot's of pictures and information about each, so please have a look.

Here's a recent article that you may find interesting.  As if Greece hasn't had enough problems recently, in this it takes a further plunge.  Can't believe they have described Greece as "an abandoned gravel pit infested with cats". 

Historians admit to inventing ancient greeks,

Well, this little fellow is going to have to grow a lot before he could have the world on his back.


This year we have seen more tortoises in the garden then ever before, but this is the first time that we've seen a baby one.

The economic problems in Greece and Europe are now having a visible impact in the "high street".

For over a year there had been the promise of an Aldi store opening in Kalamata.  We saw the building being erected, but it never reached the point where any of the interior was even started.  A couple of months ago we then read that Aldi had decided to pull out of Greece, leaving yet another half completed building in the area.

Last week we were shopping in Kalamata and noticed while in the Dia Discount store that the shelves were almost empty in some sections.  When Lainie asked one of the staff why there was a lack of items on the shelves we were told that the store we were in would be a Carrefour store later in September.  Also, by the end of the year all other Dia Discount stores in Greece would also be closed.

I had to look back to my post 2 years ago to see if history is repeating itself.

Yes it is!!

Well, almost.

Sitting on our balcony just after lunch today I suddenly realised that my tinnitus was bothering me.  The noise from the cicadas in the olive trees around us usually overpowers and masks my tinnitus.  Someone has just switched them off!

Two years ago I noticed that they had stopped, and now, only 2 days later in the year they have stopped again.

Again, there's no appreciable reason in the weather as to why they have stopped.  So again I will appeal to all of the experts out there, why do they suddenly stop?

When we were first here in the winter of 2003-04 there were some storms where small whirlwinds or water spouts were seen off the coast of Stoupa.  We didn't see those, but yesterday as a storm came up the coast from the south, directly in front of us a water spout formed twice in the course of about 15 minutes. 

The first one was the best, but we didn't notice it until some friends phoned us, so we were too slow with the camera.  When the second one formed we did managed to get some shots, but as you can see they are a little faint.

Our friends did however get a photo of the first one, and that's the final picture here.

So, August 2 years on from the fires that devastated many areas of Greece, and what have we just experienced?

Fires again, but thankfully for most of us, only in the Athens area this time. Watching the news on Greek TV channels has been a re-run of the news two years ago, basically chaos in the way that the authorities have been prepared for, and dealt with the fires.

Although many are saying that the lack of money was a factor in the lack of preparation for an event like this, I'm inclined to think back to my post at the end of August two years ago and the phrase "attention deficit".

It's a while since anything appeared here! The winter is a busy time, you can work outside without dying in the heat, so lots of jobs have been completed. Olives have been picked, but what a poor harvest last year! Lots of digging around the garden to improve the soil by removing more cement that was left after the house was built. Fences erected on walls to allow plants to climb and give us some privacy.

Also, I've been involved locally to help produce a new web site for some holiday apartments. The content was simple enough, but the challenge was to produce a layout that pleased everyone and was reasonably good HTML and CSS code. As anyone who has produced web pages knows, the basic code is not too difficult, it's trying to get everything to work with all the different browsers that people will use. You get it working and looking how you want with Firefox, have a look with IE7 and discover that several thing don't work. Fixing those takes a while to ensure that the HTML and CSS is still good. Now you have a look with IE6 and wonder if you are still looking at the same page. Back into the cycle again, fixing the IE6 may break the Firefox or IE7, which in turn.....

Ah well, it's just about finished now, so if anyone wants to have a look and give me any comments, please do so here. The URL for the site is http://www.lighthouse-apartments.gr . Please be gentle, the thought of fighting with all those different IE versions is not a pleasant thought.

Apologies to Pete Seeger for the misquote.

Two days ago suddenly almost all of the cicadas in the trees near us have either vanished or just ceased to "sing" to one another. There's just one or two that occasionally chirrup, but it's now quiet all day. The weather hasn't changed appreciably, it's still very warm, in the low/mid 30's, so that doesn't seem to be the reason. A search through internet articles about cicadas hasn't given me any clues about their "singing" season. Do they know something about the season that we don't?

Here's something new we learned a few days ago (thanks to CM), you can make "cheap" calls to international land lines FROM Greece without having to buy a pre-paid card.

The cost of a call to a UK land line for example is quoted as " 0,0364 € / minute pay-per-second (including VAT)", the cost being charged as a call to the land line from which you make the call.

OTE is currently (as of 17/08/2008) quoting a price of 0,004155 € per second to phone a fixed land line in the UK. That's 0,2493 € per minute!!!! So it's certainly cheaper than OTE, but possibly not as cheap as some pre-paid cards you can buy. It does however have the convenience of being available without needing to buy a card.

To use the service you must first obtain a PIN code, there are two ways to do this. Either dial 210 6007920, this call is a standard long distance call within Greece, or visit their web page www.ifree.gr. The web page is only in Greek so be prepared! The page seems to just give you this code: , which after it expires (100 hours usage); you must call 210 6007920 to obtain a new one.

Once you have the PIN, you make calls by dialling 801 2000 802. You will be asked for the PIN code, and this is valid for 100 hours. When you need more hours you simply call 210 6007920 to obtain a new PIN code.

This is my understanding from reading the web page, and the costs I've quoted are what I have seen today. Please be aware these may change so you need to read their pages to be certain of the service.

Firstly and update on the telephone line. Last week OTE returned with a more cable and replaced the knot holding our connection together. Almost sad to have it repaired, how many people can boast that their telephone connection has a cable with a knot in it?

After weeks of constant sun with temperatures in the low 30's, the weather yesterday was quite cloudy and the temperature dropped to the high 20's. Just as it was getting dark we also had a quick shower of rain, the first for over 2 months. Our olive trees are suffering from the lack of rain, the olives are quite small and some are turning purple and falling from the trees. Sorry to any tourists, but we need a few more showers very soon to help the trees and garden.

Yes, we're back online, so you can guess that everything's repaired.

Monday morning, our neighbour called over to tell us that they had spoken to OTE this morning and the cut line had not been reported. Perhaps the guys from the truck were worried they would be charged for the repair? Anyway, our neighbour explained the problem to OTE, so we wait. We were due to go out at 2pm and guess what, the OTE truck turns up at 1.20pm. We wrote down the names and phone numbers of the three houses for the guy to work from and Lainie went over to give him the information. We had to leave after a few minutes, so all we could do was hope. The last thing we saw was the engineer climbing the pole with the long end of the broken cable tide to a rope on his waist. Apparently he had no cable with him to replace the broken section, so he was just going to put a knot in it.



So, here's the picture to prove that you can make a joint anywhere you want. The good thing is that everything works, ISDN, ADSL and we can communicate again. Hats off to OTE, or the engineer we have in this area, he'll get it working no matter what the problem is!

On Saturday morning we were chatting with friends using Skype over the internet when suddenly we couldn't hear them. My first reaction was that the laptop we were using had lost connection with our wireless network within the house. The wireless hub we have is supposed to have quite a good range, but all the concrete and reinforcing iron in the walls and floors in the house almost mean that have to be able to physically see it. We found that the laptop works on a table on our balcony where we often sit, but if you move it 20cm to the right on the table you loose the signal.

So I started moving the laptop towards the door and checking the internet browser for web pages; nothing from those. Then I tried browsing the local network to see my other machine where email is received and found that was working, so we were in range of the wireless router. Ah, it must be a problem with the internet connection in some way, so I went to look at the physical connections to see what was happening. The first thing I noticed was that the lights on our ISDN box were out, so we didn't have any connection with the exchange.

A small flash in my head, I had just noticed a truck coming up the road passed us. Quickly looking out of the window, there he was stopped in the road. It was one of the trucks that have their own hydraulic arm for loading and unloading materials from the back. He'd just made a delivery somewhere down the road and the driven up with this arm sticking high up in the air. Of course he'd then driven into where the telephone cable crosses the road and, twannnnnggggggg. It's not only our telephone line, but also the one to our two neighbours.
Lainie called over to the two guys (in Greek) from the truck who were looking at the cables, and was told, “Yes, we'll call the office and report it”.

That was just after midday on Saturday, so now I'm sitting writing this off-line on Sunday morning.
Maybe on Monday morning OTE will arrive to repair the cable?? We are due to go out for lunch with some friends on Monday. Now I'm starting to worry that they will do it while we are out and unable to test that everything is working properly. From my experience in I.T. I know that ISDN lines have strange habits when they've been disconnected for a couple of days, in fact it's already happened with our line here.

Let's wait and see what Monday brings.

Following my last post about getting factual information from the blog written by Kat, I received the following “comment”. Whoever wrote this failed to leave their name, just posted as “Anonymous”. As it did not seem relevant to that thread, I have separated it here:

“If Greece is such a backwards country according to your writings, and you find things so unorganised here, then why don't you go back to where you came from? “

I write about what happens to us since we moved to Greece, my name and email address is clearly visible to everyone. Yes, I have opinions like everyone else, and when I express some of them I try not to be upsetting or offensive to others. I would hope that others wishing to express their views through my blog would also have the guts or decency to reveal themselves. So, as a result I have now turned off the option for people to post comments anonymously; I know there ways around everything, but....

After reading the comment I looked at what had been written over last few years trying to understand why someone thought I found Greece “a backward country” and things were so “unorganised”. I hoped I hadn't described it in either way. I don't think I have, I only recorded events that had happened to show progress with our home and incidents that we found amusing.

I apologise if those events have made it sound that Greece is the way you describe it “Anonymous” and offended you. Yes of course there are bad things and good things about the country and also the people, but that's exactly the same wherever in the world you are.

We both love Greece the way it is, we don't want to change it; we have chosen to live here.

Over the last few years we have tried to answer questions from people about various topics relating to living here in Greece. Facts about businesses and government bodies are difficult to gather and then be sure that you are accurate, particularly with the problems of language. Just when you are sure that you have grasped something, it's a fair certainty that within a month or so laws or circumstances will change and your information is no longer valid.

Even something as simple as bus timetables can be nightmare. The main national bus company KTEL removed bus timetables from their web site some time ago and now have a pay-for-info telephone service. There are still some web resources that give information and a local paper also includes timetables. The problem? None of them show the same timetables! Some are probably last years timetables, some are probably even older as people fail to update their information.

So that's why today I must tell you about a wonderful lady in Athens. I discovered her web pages by accident, pure serendipity. I won't try to tell her story here, you must read her pages yourself, but what you will find is a refreshing honesty and a wealth of factual information. Best of all, Kat periodically checks the validity of her posts and provides updates. Like the rest of us she loves Greece, but is still willing to criticise and point of the pitfalls of living here. Also, the comments by others on her articles add to the excellent insights of the Greeks and Greece.

Hats off to Kat, you'll find the link to her pages in the column on the right.

Here are two maps of the Southern Peloponnese, one showing a rectangle defining the area where most of the “local” earthquakes have occurred , and the other, with the help of the web site www.emsc-csem.org, you can see some of the activity in the last 7 days.

Since 14^th February the number of seismic events is now 266 !! Almost every day we still have something recorded for the area, but thankfully as they are mostly under magnitude 4, we don't feel anything.

On the map showing activity you can see the mass of events in the Northern Peloponnese, between Patras and Pylos that have occurred in the last couple of weeks. These started with a couple of quite serious quakes measuring over 6, and these caused considerable damage and the deaths of at least 2 people.

Also on that map you will see a large orange circle to the east of the Peloponnese, between Nafplio and Nemea. This occurred a couple of mornings ago, about 5am our time. I happened to have just been woken by our cat, Tara, who wanted to go out. After letting her out I had just laid down in bed when I heard the wood in our roof making popping and cracking noises and could feel a very gentle movement of the bed. No, no jokes please!!! So, 100km away, a magnitude 5 quake could just be felt.

I hope this is the last entry about earthquakes for some time!!

Since the first earthquakes we felt on February 14th, there have been at least two or three every day. The total events in the area to the south west of us in the sea is now 125.

Fortunately, there have been only three quakes of magnitude greater than 6; ones that we could feel. The remainder have all been less than 5, mostly in the range 3-4.

A few days ago I thought they were dying out, but still they continue. How many more can there be?

It's now a week since the first earthquake that we felt here. That one occurred on the 14th February just after midday at 12:09. Later the same afternoon we felt another, the feeling being very similar, the ground seeming to move from side to side, very little vertical movement, similar to being on a boat in harbour when another passes by. Yesterday we felt yet another, this time it lasted a little longer that the previous two, maybe around 40-45 seconds.

Checking on the activity in the area I discovered that there have now been 52 "incidents" since the 14th. These include 3 earthquakes over 6 on the Richter scale, the rest being mostly in the range 3-4. They are in an area directly out to sea from us, about 30-35 miles away. You can have look at these using the "European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre" web site at http://www.emsc-csem.org.

What is happening in this area? Are we about to see a volcano or new island rise up out of the sea as Surtsey did back in 1963? I very much doubt that, hopefully the activity will just die down in the next few days.

Well, finally after promises from different people about opening we ended up back with Dimitris and pressed the olives. As we picked early this year, the yield per kilo of olives was down a bit, but we were still pleased with the result. Only 57kg of oil this year, but that was plenty for ourselves and the rest was taken by the people leaving for Germany, so everything was finally completed successfully.

Now we have a little more pruning and clearing to be done over the next few weeks.

After a full day on Saturday, we had completed 26 trees. That's very quick and gives an indication of how bad the harvest is this year.

Saturday evening Lainie phoned our friends who had volunteered to help us on Sunday to check they would still come. "We've found it very difficult this year, only managed to pick 2 trees yesterday and 2 more today!". I think they almost believed her as they arrived just after 8am on Sunday morning to help us finish.

With their help, we had everything finished by just after midday. Jim wanted some tape and filler for a job he’s doing in his house, so we went to the village to get them from Dimitris. Dimitris not only is a builders merchant, but also runs one of the local olive presses, the one we have used for the last 3 years. When we had seen Dimitris earlier in the week he had told us the press would be running by the weekend. So, while we were there I checked if the press would be open on Monday. “No, not until Wednesday or Thursday.” When Jim and I looked inside the press building we could see why, a piece of the plant was dismantled and lying on the floor. Wednesday or Thursday could easily turn into next weekend!

Luckily last night while we were out for a meal we saw another man who runs one of the olive presses just outside the village who we had used the first year we were here. He said he would not be open on Monday, but should be running on Tuesday. So, hopefully our problem may be solved.

Well, after a bad start with a small shower, the rest of the day was mainly sunny and very warm. Sad to say the olive harvest this year is not as good.

By the time Lainie arrived back from language classes I had picked 6 trees. These were the poorest trees, the olives were small and not many on any of the trees. There were still some of the branches that I had cut from the trees to be stripped of their olives, but that's the job that Lainie prefers. By the end of the day we had finished 12 trees, but still had less than 2 sacks of olives. Last year we had just over 4 sacks for the same trees.

The weather forecast for today is warm and sunny, but Sunday and Monday are now showing possible rain.

Well, how was that? Managed to get everything out ready to start and it's rained! Only a shower, but enough to be inside for 15-20 minutes to let it dry out again.

Oh well! Another of my great decisions.....

It’s time for olive picking again! This year we’re faced with a new set of problems.

• The olives are quite small due to the long, hot, dry summer.
• They’re mostly turned dark blue and are starting to fall from the trees.
• Some people who will leave for home in about 10 days want to take some of our oil.
• If we leave the olives for another month or two the oil content will improve.
  
• As our total harvest is quite small for a batch to be processed at the olive press, we like to pick everything in one go.
• If you leave picked sackfulls for more than 4-5 days the olives deteriorate quite rapidly.
• The weather is fine at the moment, but the forecast shows showers for today.
• Tomorrow is sunny, but then we have two days with rain.

Should I start picking? Lainie is at language classes this morning, so it’s up to me. What to do?

Let’s go for it!

This morning the skies are much clearer, still a grey blanket to the north over Kalamata, but it looks as though the horror of the past few days may be nearing its end. There have been many arrests made so hopefully the number of people engaged in starting these fires is now reduced and with the winds being a little calmer the fire fighters may be able to bring it all under control.

We have seen the phrase "attention deficit" used in the press here, written by Greeks about Greeks. Having dealt with the problem the Greeks normally forget about it within days and all ideas about being prepared for a similar event are totally lost. We can only hope that this time some of the horror will stick in enough minds to ensure a safer future.